Recent landscape lighting has taken the advantage of high efficiency long life LED bulbs. But the problems of low reliability and frequent replacements remain. Landscape lights are useful at night and are in the way during the day. Just like sprinklers, it is obvious that having them retract when not in use protects the lamp and keeps them safe. Additionally, mowing around landscape lights or weed whacking around them is troublesome. There have been many attempts to make practical retractable landscape lights (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,068,773, 5,072,345, 5,683,176, 7,261,443, and 7,476,006) but none have delivered the objects of the invention herein disclosed.
This retractable landscape light is designed to be cost competitive with conventional low voltage landscape lighting or solar lighting but offers the feature of being retractable. The idea of being retractable is not new. There are many patents issued on retractable landscape lighting. But to date, no-one has invented a retractable lamp which contains all the benefits which are disclosed in this patent application. U.S. Pat. No. 7,261,443 describes a retractable light powered by pneumatics. Other inventions have an actuator mechanism located in the lower part of the lamp where water may gather. The ideas disclosed in prior art have not adequately enabled a widely useable landscape light which retracts when not being used.